Darkness Visible (29 page)

There were figures, not known to the school, running towards it. Sophy’s idea worked perfectly. Fire drill was not intended for coping with bombs. There was chaos. No one could believe in the extraordinary sounds that were just like shots. In the chaos a strange man dressed as a soldier was able to carry a burden out of the school. It was wrapped in a blanket from the end of which small feet protruded and kicked. This man stumbled on the gravel but ran as fast as he could towards the darkness of the trees. But the flaming tide made him take a curving run and as he did so, a strange thing happened in the fire. It seemed to organize itself into a shape of flame that rushed out of the garage doors and whirled round and round. It made as if on purpose for the man and his burden. It whirled round still and the only noise from it was that of burning. It came so close to the man and it was so monstrous he dropped the bundle and a boy leapt out of it and ran away, ran screaming to where the others were being marshalled. The man dressed as a soldier struck out wildly at the fire-monster, then ran, ran shouting away into the cover of the trees. The fire-monster jigged and whirled. After a time it fell down; and after some more time it lay still.

Sophy, when she left the stables, hurried along the towpath to the Old Bridge and then up into the High Street. She ran to a phone
box and dialled a number but the phone rang on and on. She came out. She ran back to the Old Bridge and down to the towpath but there was still a rosy light in the dormers of the stable buildings. She stamped her foot like a child. For a time she seemed lost, taking a few steps towards the green door then coming away, going towards the water then backing off. She ran again towards the Old Bridge then turned round and stood, her fists clenched and up by her shoulders. All the time, in the glare from the street lighting over the bridge, her face was white and ugly. Then she began to run along the towpath, away from the town and the light. She left the stabling, she passed the broken roofline of what had been Frankley’s, then the long wall of the almshouses. She passed on, light of step, but panting now, and once, slipping in the mud of the towpath.

A voice talked inside her head.

They must be at the crisis if it’s on. I hope it isn’t on. Lights out for little boys. Little men. There flashed into her mind the image of a poster the day after tomorrow.
BILLION FOR BOY
. But no, no. It is impossible that I that we are now at this very moment it may be.

Be your age. Well. Be more than your age.

There was a loud thumping noise in the hedge and it stopped her dead. Something was bouncing and flailing about and then it squeaked and she could make out that it was a rabbit in a snare, down there by the ditch that lay between the towpath and the woods. It was flailing about, not knowing what had caught it and not caring to know but killing itself in an effort just to be free, or it may be, just to be dead. Its passion defiled the night with grotesque and obscene caricature of process, of logical advance through time from one moment to the next where the trap was waiting. She hurried past it, hurried on, a chill on her skin that competed successfully for at least a minute with the warmth from her thrusting speed.

All of a glow.

That was where the children were playing. The rubber boat is still tethered there. That means they will be back, tomorrow, perhaps. I must remember that. What’s a girl like etc. And the woman. Family life. Where’s Dad? In his column room. Where’s Mum? Gone to God or in New Zealand. Well it’s much the same thing dearie, innit? That’s the lock and that’s the bridge and that’s the old barge. Those are the downs up there all a-glimmer under.

That’s the sunken road to the top with trees over. No one would come down that way, not with a car, he wouldn’t. Not with a parcel in his arms. Would the water in the canal cover a car? We ought to have found that out. If I walked up the sunken road or along beside it I could see the valley and the slope over the school. That would not be sensible. It is more sensible to stay here where I am placed to warn anyone off. To stay here is sensible.

She turned left and moved into the sunken road. The walking in the groove under the trees was a slower business than walking on the towpath; and some of the things in the air seemed to catch up with her and hang at her shoulder so she hurried as much as she could. The cloudy moon made a dapple everywhere and between the stems and trunks of the trees that had invaded the old road the sides of the downs floated and glimmered, made mostly of two-tone cloud and sliding moonlight.

Then she stopped and stood.

It was a question of direction. You could try to persuade yourself that a straight line to the sky directly over the school was not just
there
and that coincidence could stretch—a real coincidence as the lanky blonde might think it—could stretch to there being two entirely disconnected fires on that line, one, a small, controllable fire, the other—

It was a rose-coloured patch, half-seen over the shoulder of the downs. There was nothing nasty, nothing direct, just a rose petal or two; and now opening and spreading, taking in another cloud corner, the rose lighter and brighter in hue. They said it took the fire engine fifteen minutes to reach the valley by the school when called for. Phone wires cut. But this light in the sky must be beckoning; and in that school of all others there would be some form of communication they could not get at, could not cut—

And he will bring the boy here, down by the canal, to carry him along the towpath to the stables—we could use the old barge, the cupboard up in the front of it, that old loo—

The light brightened over the downs. Suddenly she knew it was her own fire, a thing she had done, a proclamation, a deed in the eye of the world—an outrage, a triumph! The feeling stormed through her, laughter, fierceness, a wild joy at the violation. It was as if the light, shuddering on the other side of the downs, was a loosening thing so that the whole world became weak and melting
like the top of a candle. It was then she saw what the last outrage was and knew herself capable of it. She shut her eyes as the image swept round her. She saw how she crawled along the long passage that led from one end of the old barge to the other. She ceased to feel the rough bark of a tree-trunk between her hands and against her body, where she clung with eyes shut. She felt instead the uneven planks of the flooring under her knees, heard the wash of the water under it, felt the wetness well over her hands. Somehow Gerry’s commando knife was in her hand. There was a sound like a rabbit thumping that came from that cupboard, that loo right up in front. Then the thumping stopped as if the rabbit was too terrified even to move. Perhaps it was listening to this slow, watery approach.

“All right! All right! I’m coming!”

The thumping would start again, a girl’s voice, well, natch.

She addressed the door conversationally.

“Just wait a moment, I’ll get you open.”

It came easily enough, swung wide. The first thing she could see inside was the ellipse of the little round window, the porthole. But there was also a small white rectangle on the midline of the boat and directly above the seat of the loo, the elsan or whatever. This rectangle was moving violently from side to side and she could smell wee-wee. The boy was there, arms bound behind his back, feet and knees bound. He was seated, bound, on the loo like he might have been in the cupboard and ropes held him on either side to the walls of the boat and there was a huge pad of sticky stuff stuck across his mouth and cheeks. He was jerking as violently as he could and there was a whining noise coming out of his nose. She felt an utter disgust at the creature itself sitting there on the stinking loo, so disgusting, eek and ooh, oh so much part of all weirdness from which you could see that the whole thing was a ruin and

I chose.

Should have brought a gun only I don’t know, it is better with the knife—oh much better!

The boy was motionless now, waiting for her on the flat stone. She began to fumble at his jersey with her left hand and he made no move; but when she pulled out the front of his shirt he began to struggle again. But the bonds were beautifully done, Gerry had done a super job, just amazing, the way in which the boy had only 
a limited kick with his stockinged feet was lovely, should he not have been in his pyjams, the nasty little creature must have been up to something, and she swept her hand over his naked turn and belly button, the navel my dear if you must refer to it at all and she felt paper-thin ribs and a beat, beat, thump, thump at left centre. So she got his trousers undone and held his tiny wet cock in her hand as he struggled and hummed through his nose. She laid the point of the knife on his skin and finding it to be the right place, pushed it a bit so that it pricked. The boy convulsed and flailed in the confinement and she was or someone was, frightened a bit, far off and anxious. So she thrust more still and felt it touch the leaping thing or be touched by it again and again while the body exploded with convulsions and a high humming came out of the nose. She thrust with all the power there was, deliriously; and the leaping thing inside seized the knife so that the haft beat in her hand, and there was a black sun. There was liquid everywhere and strong convulsions and she pulled the knife away to give them free play but they stopped. The boy just sat there in his bonds, the white patch of elastoplast divided down the middle by the dark liquid from his nose.

She came to herself with a terrible start that banged her head against the tree-trunk. There was a roaring and a great clittering of insect stuff and a red, mad light that swirled along the side of the downs. It passed overhead then swung up over the skyline to drop down towards where the fire was. She was trembling with the passion of the mock murder and she began to let herself down the tree-tunnel, back towards the old barge and her knees sagged. She came to the field bridge over the canal—and there was the car coming, no lights, heaving over the uneven track. She could not run, but waited for it. The car stopped, backed, turned and was ready to get away. Then she went to it, giggling and staggering to explain to Gerry about the old men in the stables and how they must use the boat but it was Bill there in the driving seat.

“Bill? Where is he? Where’s the boy?”

“There’s no bleeding boy. I had him and some burning bugger come out at me and—Sophy it’s all gone wrong. We got to get away!”

She stood, staring into his face that was pallid on one side and glowing on the other where a cloud burned in the sky.

“Miss! Sophy—come on for fuck’s sake! We got minutes—”

“Gerry!”

“He’s all right—they got your boyfriend as a hostage—now come on—”

“They?”

Ever since he saw her without the wig, I knew. Something told me only I refused to believe it. Treachery. They think they’ve done a swop.

The rage that burst in her overwhelmed triumph and fierceness, bore her up so that she screamed at him, at them, and cursed and spat; and then she was down on hands and knees and screaming and screaming into the grass where there was no boy but a Sophy who had been used and fooled by everyone.

“Sophy!”

“Get lost you dumb beast! Oh shit!”

“For the last time—”

“Sod off!”

And when at last she stopped screaming and began to understand how she had torn her cheeks and how there was hair in her hands and how there was now nothing else, not him nor them nor her but a black night with a dying fire over the crest of the downs the tears rained down her cheeks and washed the blood from them.

Presently she knelt up and spoke, as if he were there.

“It’s
no
good
you see! All those years, no one—You think she’s wonderful, don’t you? Men always do at first. But there’s nothing there, Gerry, nothing at all. Just the minimum flesh and bones, nothing else, no one to meet, no one to go with, be with, share with. Just ideas. Ghosts. Ideas and emptiness, the perfect terrorist.”

She got up, heavily, and glanced across at the old barge where there was no boy, no body. She slung her shoulder bag and wondered how much damage she had done her face. She turned away from the boat and the fire and began to pick her way back along the towpath, where there was now nothing visible but darkness.

“I shall tell. I was used. They’ll have nothing on me. Take the ropes off that chair. He said we were going camping, my lord. I’ve
been very foolish my lord I’m sorry I can’t help crying. I think my fiancé must have been part of it
my lord he was friendly with, with—I’m sure my Daddy had nothing to do with it, my lord. He wanted us out of the stables my lord, said he wanted to use them for something else. No my lord that was after he had been to a chess meeting in Russia. No my lord he never said.”

As they let him out of the back of the building Sim adjusted his coloured spectacles with movements so habitual they seemed to have become a part of his automatic life. They were one of three pairs he had acquired during the weeks of the inquiry. His walk was automatic, too, a stately progress. He had learnt that it was fatal—almost literally fatal—to hurry. That way he would attract notice and raise the shout of,
there’s one of them,
or,
that’s the fellow who gave evidence today,
or even,
that’s Goodchild!
It seemed his name was peculiarly attractive to them.

Stately, he walked down the side road to join Fleet Street and thus avoid the queue of those who still were unable to get in. He was inspected by a passing policeman, and even in the twilight of his coloured glasses, he thought the man looked at him with amusement and contempt.

I could do with a cup of tea.

The further you got away from the inquiry, you would have thought, the less there was a chance of being recognized? Not a bit of it! Television made everywhere the same.
There’s
the
fellow
who
was
giving
evidence
—No escape. The real ruin, the real public condemnation, was not to be good or bad; either of those had a kind of dignity about them; but to be a fool and to be seen to have been one—

At the end, when we can go away, they will have exonerated us. Until then, we are pilloried. And after?

The woman on the bus—
there’s
one
of
them!
Aren’t
you
one
of
the
fellows
who
was
in
those
stables
? And then the spit, incompetent spitting, badly aimed, hanging on the sleeve of his heather-mixture greatcoat—We did nothing! It was a kind of praying!

There was a crowd round a shop. Drawn as he always was, despite himself, to this extension of a place and time, he stopped
and stood at the back. By dodging this way and that, he could contrive to see brokenly into the window where at least fifteen television screens were showing their identical pictures; and then he saw a smaller one, high up and at an angle, so he ceased to dodge.

It was the afternoon round-up, he saw. There was a split screen, Mr Justice Mallory and his two coadjutors occupying the bottom third of it, and the smoking school above it, now a very famous film indeed. Athough he had never seen the school itself in the days when it had stood untouched and dignified, he could nevertheless identify the various windows from which various children of this royalty or that princedom or that multinational had jumped or been thrown. The top picture changed. Now it was harking back to London airport—there was Toni, her hair dazzling, there was the young ex-officer (that hurt) who had been her accomplice; there, close to him and at the wrong end of his pistol, the weight-lifter who had been engaged to the other sister—was he part of it? It was unbelievable—what was which and who? There was the plane taking off—the picture changed again and with a dull pain at his heart he saw what was to come. The bug was looking down into a small room where three men were sitting round a table. One of them was writhing and then suddenly laid his head down on the table. Their hands were joined. The man opposite lifted his head and opened his mouth.

The film cut to the inquiry again, everybody laughing, the judge, legal persons, press and those odd bodies whose function he had never quite understood, and who were perhaps special agents as a back-up to the armed soldiers who stood here and there against the walls. There was another cut, back, this time, the film of the three men in slow motion, his own head bowing jerkily, then Edwin’s mouth open—and this time the people who stood round the shop window were laughing like the men in the inquiry.

“It wasn’t like that!”

Fortunately no one noticed. He hurried away, not able to bear the thought that he might see once more (it was such a popular item) his own evidence that Mr Justice Mallory had described as a moment of low comedy in this terrible affair—

“You say, Mr Goodchild, you were not in a trance?”

“No my lord. My hands were held and I was trying to scratch my nose.”

And then the roars of laughter, on and on—oh, it must have been for whole seconds.

I wouldn’t believe it myself. I wouldn’t believe we were—are—innocent.

I heard her in the street, the other woman nodding and talking at the same time the way they do,
there’s
no
smoke
without
fire
that’s
what
I
said.
Then they both shut up because they saw me.

The tube was roaring and crowded with rush-hour traffic. He hung on a strap, keeping his head down, looking where he would have seen his feet if a man’s stomach hadn’t got in the way. It was almost restful to hang there with no one to recognize the fool.

He walked from the station, coming up out of the earth to the street with a sense that once more he was vulnerable. Of course we all had something to do with it! We were there, weren’t we?

The man who looked like an accountant but was from the secret service or whatever they call it, the one who did the bugging, said they’d been on to her sister for nearly a year. Who used who?

I had nothing to do with it. Nevertheless I am guilty. My fruitless lust clotted the air and muffled the sounds of the real world.

I am mad.

In the High Street he walked straight and painful, tense. He knew that even the brown women, cloth drawn across the lower part of the face—but in his case as he passed, drawing it higher still, to avoid contamination—even the brown women looked, glinting sideways.

There he goes.

Even Sandra looked. She came fatly, clumsily, but all gleaming and alive with excitement—“My mum wants me not to come but I said as long as Mr Goodchild wants me—”

Sandra wanting to be connected with terror, no matter how far off.

There was a sound of rapid footsteps beside him that slowed to his pace. He glanced sideways and it was Edwin, chin up, fists driven together in the pockets of his greatcoat. He wove a bit and brushed Sim’s shoulder. Then they walked on, side by side. People made room for them. Sim turned into the lay-by where he kept his van. Instead of walking the few steps to Sprawson’s, Edwin came with him. Sim opened the side door and Edwin followed without saying anything.

In the little sitting-room behind the shop there was dim light. Sim wondered whether to pull the curtains aside but decided against.

Edwin spoke in little more than a whisper.

“Is Ruth all right?”

“What is ‘All right’?”

“Edwina’s with her sister. Have you heard where Stanhope is?”

“Staying at his club, they say. I don’t know.”

“Some newspaper’s got Sophy.”

“‘He stole my heart away, says terrorist’s twin.’”

“You’re moving I suppose.”

“Selling to the shopping-centre people.”

“A good price?”

“Oh no. They’ll pull the place down and use the ground for access. Big firm.”

“Books?”

“Auction. Might make a bit. We’re famous for the time being. Roll up!”

“We’re innocent. He said so. ‘I must state here and now that I think these two gentlemen are the victims of an unfortunate coincidence.’”

“We’re not innocent. We’re worse than guilty. We’re funny. We made the mistake of thinking you could see through a brick wall.”

“I’m being encouraged to resign. It’s not fair.”

Sim laughed.

“I should like to go to my daughter, get the hell out of it.”

“Canada?”

“Exile.”

“I think, Sim, I shall write a book about the whole affair.”

“You’ll have the leisure.”

“I shall track down and cross-examine everybody who had anything to do with the whole ghastly business and I shall find out the truth.”

“He was right, you know. History
is
bunk. History is the nothing people write about a nothing.”

“The Akashic records—”

“At least I’m not going to make the mistake of fooling with that kind of idiocy again. No one will
ever
know what happened. There’s too much of it, too many people, a sprawling series of events that break apart under their own weight. Those lovely
creatures—they have everything​—everything in the world, youth, beauty, intelligence—or is there nothing to live for? Crying out about freedom and justice! What freedom? What justice? Oh my God!”

“I don’t see what their beauty has to do with it.”

“A treasure was poured out for them and they turned their back on it. A treasure not just for them but for all of us.”

“Listen!”

“What is it?”

Edwin held up one finger. There was a noise, someone was fiddling with the door of the shop. Sim jumped up and hurried forward. Mr Pedigree was just closing the door behind him.

“We’re not open. Good day to you.”

Pedigree did not seem so defensive.

“Why was the door open then?”

“It shouldn’t have been.”

“Well it was.”

“Please leave.”

“You’re in no position, Goodchild, to come the heavy. Oh I know it’s only an inquiry, not a trial. But we know, don’t we? You’re in possession of my small property.”

Edwin pushed past Sim.

“You’re an informer, aren’t you? You did it, didn’t you?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“That’s why you wouldn’t stay—”

“I went because I didn’t like my company.”

“You went to switch the bug on!”

“Edwin, does it matter? That secret service man—”

“I said I’d get the truth!”

“Well. I want my ball. There it is, on your desk. I paid for it. Matty was really honest, you know.”

“Just a moment, Sim. We know why you want it don’t we? Do you want to go to jail again?”

“We might all go to jail, mightn’t we? How do I know I’m not speaking to a very clever pair of terrorists who put those girls up to it? Yes of course she was—as bad as the other! The judge said you were innocent, but we, the great British Public, we—how odd to find myself one of them!—we know, don’t we?”

“No, Sim—let me. Pedigree, you’re a filthy old thing and you ought to be done away with. Take it and go!”

Mr Pedigree gave a kind of high whinny.

“You think I
like
wandering round lavatories and public parks, desperate for, for—I don’t want to, I have to! Have to! Just for, no not even that, just for affection; and more than that, just a touch—It’s taken me sixty years to find out what makes me different from other people. I have a rhythm. Perhaps you remember, or are you too young to remember, when it was said that all God’s children had rhythm? Mine’s a wave motion. You don’t know what it’s like to live like that, do you? You think I
want
to go to jail? But every so often I can feel the time coming, creeping up on me. You don’t know what it’s like to want desperately not to and yet know you will, oh yes you will! To feel the denouement, the awful climax, the catastrophe moving and moving and moving—to know that—to say to yourself on Friday it may be, ‘I won’t, I won’t, I won’t—’ and all the time to
know
with a kind of ghastly astonishment that on Saturday you will, oh yes you will, you’ll be fumbling at their flies—”

“For God’s sake!”

“And worse; because many years ago a doctor told me what I might become in the end, what with obsession and fear and senility—to keep some child quiet—do I sound verging on senility?”

“Give yourself up. Go to hospital.”

“Only they did it while they were young. Willing to kidnap a child—not worrying who got killed—imagine it, those young men, that beautiful girl with all her life before her! No, I’m nowhere near the worst, gentlemen, among the bombings and kidnappings and hijackings all for the highest of motives—what did she say? We know what we are but not what we may be. A favourite character of mine, gentlemen. Well, I won’t thank you for your kindness and hospitality. I’m sorry we shan’t meet inside—unless of course they turn up more evidence.”

They watched him in silence as he wrapped his coat round him, held the big, coloured ball to his chest, and went with his curious springy, tottery step and let himself out of the side door. A moment or two later he shadowed the chinks of boarded-up shop window and was gone.

Sim sat down at the desk, wearily.

“It can’t be happening to me.”

“It is.”

“The real hardship is that there’s no end. I sit here. Will they ever stop showing that film of us round the table?”

“Have to, sooner or later.”

“Can you stop watching it when it’s on?”

“No. Actually not. I have to, like you. Like, like—no, I won’t say like Pedigree. But every newstime, every special report, every radio programme—”

Sim stood up and went into the sitting-room. The sound of a man’s voice swelled and the screen flickered into brightness. Edwin stood in the doorway. They were going through it all again on the other channel. The shot of the school appeared, was panned slowly, to take in the shattered and smoke-blackened wing. Then, endlessly after that, were Toni and Gerry and Mansfield and Kurtz herding their hostages towards the plane; and again, as a preliminary, before the day’s advance, the new News, there was Toni in Africa, broadcasting, beautiful and remote, the long aria in that silvery voice about freedom and justice—

Sim cursed at her.

“She’s mad! Why don’t people say so? She’s mad and bad!”

“She’s not human, Sim. We have to face it at last. We’re not all human.”

“We’re all mad, the whole damned race. We’re wrapped in illusions, delusions, confusions about the penetrability of partitions, we’re all mad and in solitary confinement.”

“We think we
know
.”

“Know? That’s worse than an atom bomb, and always was.”

In silence then, they looked and listened; then exclaimed together.

“Journal? Matty’s journal? What journal?”

“—has been handed to Mr Justice Mallory. It may throw some light—”

Presently Sim switched the set off. The two men looked at each other and smiled. There would be news of Matty—almost a meeting with him. Somehow and for no reason that he could find, Sim felt heartened by the idea of Matty’s journal—happy almost, for the moment. Before he knew what he was about he found himself staring intently into his own palm.